When Love Turns to Ash Novel – Chapter 12
Jax stumbled away from the wreckage of what should have been his wedding, his mind spiraling into a void. He didn’t remember the drive. Didn’t remember parking. Suddenly, he was standing outside the building in Brooklyn—the one where she used to live. The one Ben had once dragged him to for a so-called “intervention” that never happened.
The lock was old. It yielded with barely a struggle.
Her apartment was hollow. Still. Quiet.
Stripped bare, like a body without a soul.
A thin layer of dust coated everything. The place hadn’t been touched in weeks. Maybe months.
In the corner, the small rickety desk where she used to sketch. One sheet of paper lay in the center.
He picked it up.
A printout. A flight itinerary.
Florence. One way. Dated weeks ago.
She was really gone.
A sound behind him—Ben stood in the doorway, his expression unreadable but his jaw tight.
“What the hell are you doing in here, Jax?” he asked, voice sharp.
Jax didn’t answer. He just stared at the flight details.
Gone. Not metaphorically. Not dramatically.
Just… gone.
His eyes wandered to the trash can in the corner—overflowing, untouched since the day she left.
He moved toward it like a sleepwalker, dropped to his knees, and began to pull out pieces of their past.
The tarnished guitar pick he’d given her at that tiny Texas festival, the one she kept like a talisman.
Sketches—early designs for The Night Howlers logo, drawn in ballpoint pen on napkins and scraps.
A dried, fragile corsage. From some high school dance he never even asked her to.
A stained and bent mock-up of their imaginary debut album cover. “Someday.” That had been the title.
Each item was a relic of her faith in him. Her love. Her relentless belief in something he’d always laughed off, used, and betrayed.
His hands trembled.
He pulled out his phone, fumbled to dial.
Straight to voicemail.
Of course.
Ben stepped further into the room, arms crossed, his face carved from stone.
“She’s not going to answer, Jax.”
His tone was flat. Merciless.
“You had your chance. Years of chances. You threw them all away—for what? Chloe? PR hype?”
His voice cracked, but only with rage.
“She loved you, you stupid bastard! She baked you cookies. She designed your posters. She moved to New York for you! All because of that one dumb thing you said when you were drunk—’Wait till you’re twenty-two, Savvy.’ You knew what that meant to her.”
Jax opened his mouth, but Ben wasn’t done.
“You let them mock her. You planned that fake pregnancy to scare her off. You pushed her into a fountain. You left her bleeding.”
Each word landed like a punch.
Jax sank to the floor, his back against the wall, surrounded by all the things she once held dear.
Guilt was no longer a whisper in his ear.
It was a scream, tearing through every inch of him.
He had nothing. No defense. No excuses.
Ben stared down at him, eyes hard. “It’s too late for apologies, Jax. Way too late.”
Jax lifted his head, desperation clawing at his throat. “Her flight—Ben, please. What airline? What time? I just need to—”
Ben cut him off with a slow, bitter shake of his head.
He stepped forward and kicked the trash can.
Its contents—her memories, her devotion—spilled across the floor in a flutter of forgotten love.
“She’s gone, Jax. Forever. And she’s never looking back.”
He reached into his coat, pulled something out, and tossed it at Jax’s feet.
A drawing.
A charcoal sketch.
A portrait of Jax, younger, softer. Guitar in hand. Eyes bright. Smiling.
The boy she once believed in.
The boy who never really existed.
Jax picked it up with shaking hands.
And then he just sat there.
Alone.
Utterly, completely alone with his regrets.